WANOKIWAMI - a unique project. Takeshi Wanaka, a Japanese master in wood processing with the focus on processing noble woods and andro® developers worked together hand in hand. Wanaka, a well known greatness in his field with many international awards, brings all his know-how of selection, processing and bonding premium-wood into this project. The andro® development team has deliberately left a free hand to Takeshi Wanaka in many respects to allow influences from another wood processing branch. Promotion players, coaches and test players have confirmed this in numerous tests with one voice.

Wanokiwami Midori is the masterpiece of andro defensive woods. Excellently processed, providing all comforts requested by defense players. Wanokiwami Midori fulfills all wants of a modern defender. In the development process focus was set on the balance between attack and defense. The main goal was to create a blade that provides best control at a moderate pace without suffering a loss of power at attacks. andro Wanokiwami Midori mastered this balancing act with a pretty thick core veneer covered by extremely thin intermediate and outer veneers. The core veneer provides the power and the soft outer layers carry in the necessary feeling by stable control.

Class: Def
Plies: 5
Blade Size: 167x157mm
Speed:80
Control:100
Weight: 86g

I got it as a spare blade for 'special occasions')) i.e. for the players whom I cannot beat with my regular set-up)
it is quite slow and soft
I use Der Materialspezialist Elimination long OX on it though those pips are only good for chopping and nothing else) on FH I use Tackiness Chop 1.8
what I really love about this blade is its very convenient handle

Can you compare this blade to any of the more popular ones?
Would you say it's stiff and soft? But slow? How slow?

How is it in the chopping department?

Giving a mini-review on this rather rarely used blade...

Speed wise, it is faster than a good many other defensive blades. Faster than defplay, hadrawshield, innershield zlf for instance. It feels quite similar to the original koji matsushita blade.

For physical characteristics -- the handle emblem on my particular one is a lengthy black piece of material and it is not flush with the wood. It is raised, rather annoyingly so in fact! When gripping it, my fingertips feel like they're holding onto a tiny bar running across the handle. I've considered taking off the rubbers and using the backhand side for the forehand, since the BH does not any any emblems or indents etc. I've still had to sand down the handle, as the place where it meets the blade has pretty sharply angled curves, so I sanded the handle a bit to smooth out and flatten this part. Otherwise it feels like your thumb is resting on a ledge, instead of flowing into the blade.

Playing wise -- very good control, a bit on the stiff side though not overly fast. Nothing really stands out about it for me. It's a good choice for those people wanting a relatively slow defensive blade, yet dislike the flexy/high vibration types. I think it's quite good and fills in the gap nicely between blades like the joo/koji offensive and ones like defplay/hadraw shield. Meaning it is medium fast for a defensive blade.